Red Cross warns hospitals hit as fighting in Syria escalates

FILE -- This undated file photo, shows Abu Mohammed al-Golani, second right, then leader of Fatah al-Sham Front, in pictures posted by the group, discussing battlefield details with field commanders over a map, in Aleppo, Syria. Russia's military announced Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017, that it carried out airstrikes in Syria this week that critically wounded al-Golani, the leader of the al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee and killed 12 other militant commanders. Writing in Arabic banner reads, "Sheik Abu Mohammed al-Golani inspects military development and discusses them with military commanders as part of the battle for lifting the siege off Aleppo." (Militant UGC via AP, file)

BEIRUT — Intensified fighting in Syria in recent weeks has damaged more hospitals, with at least 10 medical facilities hit over the past 10 days and hundreds of thousands of people cut off from health care, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

The escalation in fighting has also forced hundreds of schools across the country to suspend classes over the past two weeks, with teachers sending children home in terror as bombs and shells fall nearby, Save the Children said.

The violence has been the worst the war-torn country has seen since government forces captured the rebel-held eastern part of the city of Aleppo last December. ICRC said it’s alarmed by reports of hundreds of civilian casualties and the destruction of hospitals and schools.

“We have seen an increasingly worrying spike in military operations that correlates with high levels of civilian casualties,” said Marianne Gasser, head of ICRC’s delegation in Syria.

Fighting has been especially heavy in recent weeks in central, northern and eastern Syria between Russian-backed government forces and rival insurgent groups. The violence is also taking place in de-escalation zones that are part of a deal reached in the Kazakh capital of Astana between Iran, Turkey and Russia.

With swelling numbers of civilians fleeing military operations, some camps around the northern province of Raqqa and in the eastern region of Deir el-Zour are receiving over 1,000 women, children and men every day, the statement said.

Syrian troops and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been gaining ground from the Islamic State group in both provinces over the past months. Their separate but simultaneous attacks have led thousands of people to flee IS-held areas that have come under intense airstrikes by Russian warplanes and those of the U.S.-led coalition.

On Wednesday, government forces kicked out IS fighters form the central province of Hama, ending a three-year presence of the extremists in the central region that has a religiously mixed population.

Save the Children said vital education and psychological support for tens of thousands of children has been disrupted and at least three schools have been attacked in the past week.

In a statement Thursday, it said 55 of the 60 schools and learning spaces that it supports in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo — attended by nearly 20,000 children — have had to shut for days at a time to try and keep the children safe.

“Education in Syria is yet again coming under attack, and it is too dangerous to keep the schools open while bombs are falling all around,” said Sonia Khush, Save the Children’s Syria director.

The Russian Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said its submarines fired 10 cruise missiles on Thursday at Islamic State positions outside the eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, one of the last major IS strongholds in the country.

Russia has been a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and has helped government troops gain significant ground from opposition fighters and militant groups.

The ministry’s spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement the Kalibr missiles killed an unspecified number of IS fighters and destroyed major ammunition depots and command posts. The missiles were launched from the Veliky Novgorod and the Kolpino submarines in the Mediterranean Sea, Konashenkov said.

Syrian troops with the help of Russian air cover have been closing in on Mayadeen, which has become a main IS hub for militants and the group’s leaders after its former strongholds of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour have come under attack.

Russia’s military also said the leader of an al-Qaida-linked group in Syria who was reportedly wounded in a Russian airstrike this week had fallen into a coma. The military offered no evidence on the purported condition of Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

Russian jets bombed positions of the militant group, the Levant Liberation Committee, in the northwestern province of Idlib for two days and on Wednesday killed seven militant commanders and dozens of fighters at a militant-controlled air base, the Russian Defence Ministry said Thursday. At the time, the ministry quoted military intelligence as saying that al-Golani had been critically wounded.

However, the al-Qaida-linked group denied its leader had been wounded, saying he was in excellent health and carrying on his tasks as usual.